Selphira snapped her head toward Julius, her cloak whipping violently in the ash-laden wind. "Wasn't that vault still permanently sealed? The scholars explicitly stated we had more than a year left before the dense mana barrier dissolved."
"No." Julius's voice was utterly grim, stripped of any hope. "We were already close to running out of time."
For years, Arturo, Ren, and Wei had been meticulously studying the lingering effects of the old corruption on the massive crystal sphere buried beneath the academy, the exact same ancient sphere that slowly converted its mass into liquid ether because it was tethered to the castle's central grid.
Their classified research had yielded a terrifying conclusion. The decay caused by the original corruption in Yino had drastically accelerated the sphere's consumption cycle, quietly shaving nearly a year off the clock. They wanted to know exactly when the barrier was going to open and were making preparations, but…
